


Move

by DROLLmaeosaur



Category: Magic: The Gathering
Genre: In before canon invalidates me, M/M, The Ribbon Thing, The sappiest of shit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-13
Updated: 2019-08-13
Packaged: 2020-08-20 09:10:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,190
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20225374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DROLLmaeosaur/pseuds/DROLLmaeosaur
Summary: Motion was safe. But he couldn’t make his body move.





	Move

With the same brash, arrogant energy that Ral started any project, he reached for one of the trailing, ribbon-ends of the red band tied around his arm and ripped it free. One handed he needed his teeth to help tear it off, like he’d tie a tourniquet to stem bleeding. It was all so easy until he took it from his mouth and actually stared down at the jewel-bright fabric in his hand. He paused, then closed his fingers around it. 

There was a pressure in his chest and it felt like his lungs were going to bruise where they pressed against his ribs. He exhaled long and slow because he realized it was the only way it was going to come out even and not a jumble of loose sparks. 

That slow breath was a mistake.

Uncertainty crept into the edges of his thoughts as it always did after the initial spark of momentum had ebbed out. His fingers went loose in the fist they’d made around the red ribbon and it was just… staring up at him.

This was all a mistake. It was foolish. Presumptive. Childish. It was soft and emotional and raw in a way that he thought he had grown out of of.

Now he was just sitting there, with torn bits of himself on display like he really was a child again.

“Ral?” Tomik asked. Ral looked up. There was no alarm on Tomik’s face, just a quiet sort of confusion. The measured patience that Ral had come to expect.

Ral said nothing. He didn’t have anything to say because the charge at the start of this had been knocked out of him and bottled back up at the same time. Acceleration felt impossible now that he’d quagmired in this standstill. Motion was so much easier. It was always easier. Motion was energy and work and progress. Movement got things done. Motion, movement, energy was all he’d ever had because stopping was…

His looked at the ribbon again.

Motion was safe.

But he couldn’t make his body move.

Tomik was still watching him, brows creased only slightly in a concern that was as unobtrusive as it was unsettling. The emotion was open on his face, unguarded and honest but not presumptive - never imposed upon Ral but there for his taking if he’d only ask it for it. 

Just waiting for him to ask for it.

Gods he wished that Tomik would look away from him, blush and stammer or start fiddling with his glasses.

He didn’t.

Tomik reached out slow. He steadily arched his fingers into Ral’s half-open palm before the rest of his hand even came near. Its was all by degrees.

His fingers didn’t touch Ral, but he laid two of them down over the remnant and Ral could feel the heat through the fabric.

“Ral.” Tomik said. It’s wasn’t question this time.

The stillness in the wake of his voice was deafening. It was suffocating and the room was spinning and he could have fallen in any direction but - he fell forward.

Gravity, maybe.

Ral’s hand closed over Tomik’s wrist, thumb at the pulse point. He was so alive and warm and there. Still there. Which isn’t stillness at all but a stubborn kind of conscious will to exist against the odds on both their parts.

He needed two hands.

Tomik’s wrist was in one and he couldn’t chance at letting go. Not yet. He pulled the length of red fabric from between their hands and he started looping it around again before it was even cleared of the space between them. The length he’d ripped free was excessive, it circled twice around Tomik’s wrist with tattered tails to spare in either direction. He could have tied the damn thing in a bow and had a hand span left on either side.

He tied it in a loose knot instead. He bit back on the flare inside of himself that wanted to use the remaining force of his reckless impetus through one more rotation around - and then wrench it tight.

But Ral left it like that, ends hanging.

He could have - Tomik didn’t pull away. 

Instead Tomik waited and when he lifted his wrist at all, he brought his other hand up to meet it, thumbing at the ribbon standing out so loud and so red against his skin.  
He traced the long lines of the ribbon, rolling the tattered ends between his fingers when he reached the end. Then his fingers crossed to the fine hem of his own white sleeve and huffed a barely-audible laugh to himself. 

“You stupid man. What am I going to do with you?”

Ral’s heart would have jumped into his throat if he hadn’t already tied it around Tomik’s wrist.

But when he looked up at Ral there was a tired smile on his face and then he pushed himself up to stand, bracing his weight with a hand on each of Ral’s knees. He pressed a soft kiss into the corner of Ral’s mouth with a slow kind of purpose.

It was an unmistakably non-sexual thing. There was something about it that Ral could only think, dazed, to call reverence and it stopped him from turning and catching Tomik’s lips in a way that he desperately, desperately wanted to. He forced himself still.

The moment passed and Tomik pulled away, walking back into another room of the apartments.

It left Ral alone with a blank feeling. A cocktail of dumbfounded with equal parts exhaustion and and yearning, desperate curiosity. It felt like an age. Surely it was only a minute or two in retrospect.

Tomik returned with steady, even steps like he always did, and he sat once more in front of him. There was a little leather folio in his hands that he unfastened and opened. Tomik pulled a long, thin length of white fabric out of it. It looked similar to the fabric of his robes and, as Tomik ran his thumb over it, Ral realized it was exactly similar. Identical ivory-white, just the same grain.

He felt more than saw Tomik look up and his eyes followed as if on a tether.

“These are very expensive robes you know.” Tomik said. “But luckily, most of us tend to keep a small patch kit on us. Can’t be caught walking into a meeting with my lot if you’ve got a tear in your robes or, ghosts above, a stain.”

Tomik took Ral’s hand and pulled it towards him, palm up. The patch piece was just long enough to wrap around his wrist and tuck into place and Ral felt more than saw the glow of the binding magic when Tomik covered it with his hands.

Ral’s heart was still in his chest after all, in a physical capacity anyway, beating suddenly at a pounding thrum. 

“What will you do if you need to fixed up now?” Ral asked.

Tomik extended his own arm back towards him, the loose knot in the red ribbon against his upturned wrist towards Ral. Tomik smiled. “I suppose I’ll have to find you then, won’t I?”

**Author's Note:**

> My internet went out last night and I didn't have anything else to do. Here you go internet. Hopefully canon doesn't make a complete fool of me tomorrow. 
> 
> (I make enough of a fool of myself TYVM).


End file.
